


Those Who Heal (The Come Celebrate With Me Remix)

by seinmit



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Gen, Past Brainwashing, Restraints, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26742328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/pseuds/seinmit
Summary: Bucky wanted Shuri to test if the command phrase worked and he didn’t want her to stop.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Shuri
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18
Collections: Remix Revival 2020





	Those Who Heal (The Come Celebrate With Me Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).
  * Inspired by [For Those Who Can Heal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14980235) by [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva). 



Bucky remembered himself every time he woke from cryo. It was like rising from sleep, and not even years away from normal life could shake the basic human sense of coming into himself. That typically held only for moments, before the unflinching cold sunk into his bones and the electricity sunk into his mind, and the words twisted around his brain and yanked him into someone else, someone who didn't have any self to speak of. 

This time, though, it wasn't like that. 

He kept his eyes closed while still wet from the defrosting. His skin was pimpled up from the cold, and he couldn't suppress the muscle twitching--but, he didn't react to the sharp, pricking pain of heat. He didn't betray that he was there. 

If the first thing he always remembered on waking was himself, the second thing was that he remembered he shouldn't know that. 

He held himself waiting, uncomfortable. Ready to have compliance wash over him.

"Are you pretending to sleep?" A skeptical voice, an unfamiliar accent. "You're not as good as it as I was. Mother could never tell, even if I just shoved my tablet under the covers." 

Xhosa-iinflected accent, his brain said. South Africa. He had been in South Africa in the late eighties--they yanked back from assignment there when the Soviet Union teetered even further into collapse, but HYDRA had put many fingers into apartheid pies. 

"Sergeant Barnes," the voice repeated, still sounding lightly amused, and the shock of that echoed through him, enough that his eyes opened. A girl smirked down at him, young. 

"Aren't you going to thank me?" 

There was a long pause of trying to kick his memories into gear, trying to remember what had been said. _Shuri_. Wakanda. His arm--he shifted his shoulders and felt the absence of weight.

"How long has it been?" he asked, his voice hoarse. 

"Two weeks," she said, sounding incredibly smug. He blinked, and her smile grew. "Yep. Two weeks, and I did it."

He slowly eased himself into a sitting position and looked around. The King was on the other side of the lab, his body language relaxed and peering over a small object that Bucky couldn't see the details of from this angle. He was likely there as a safety precaution--Bucky remembered how hard his punch landed, but it was a pretty courtesy to keep him distracted. Other than the two royals, there were no other people lurking.

He was used to waking to a phalanx of guards. This was different. 

"Have you checked?" he asked. He couldn't help but keep the sharpness from it--they should be more cautious than this. Who knows what else was lurking. 

"We can check!" Shuri said. "You have good scientific instincts for being a fossil yourself. Always test your hypothesis. Hit us, T'Challa." 

Bucky tensed. "You should really tie me up first. Best stuff you got." 

"You're very skeptical, you know," Shuri scolded. 

"Shuri!" T'Challa said, moving closer to the interaction. She grinned at him, showing off a toothy impishness. "What? I'm just saying." 

Bucky felt a wave of annoyance simmer underneath his tension. "The best way I can thank you is by not accidentally killing you." 

Shuri pushed air through her teeth disdainfully. "Like you could. Arrogant, too. Colonizers! You get a fancy serum--"

"Is it really the best idea to be teasing someone so new to us?" T'Challa said, visibly pained. 

The annoyance in his throat collapsed into laughter. It had been a long time since someone needled him like this—it was little sisters stuff, and Steve Rogers, and joking around with his team in the Army. No one bothered giving the Winter Soldier shit. 

He laughed until he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. T'Challa was looking away out of some instinct to preserved Bucky's privacy. Shuri, under no such compunction, met his gaze and smiled. "I have some restraints that would more than hold T'Challa. You'll get to measure strength, eh? Do your best." 

"I really hope I don’t try," Bucky said, but he obligingly stepped into the prepared restraints. T'Challa buckled him in and winked, so quickly that Bucky thought it might have been his imagination. 

If had the ability to think about this in advance, he might have worried about panicking while constrained like this. But, he was too aware of what was coming next. His entire body, his senses, all quivering in anticipation -- the words were coming, that was inevitable, but was Bucky Barnes sticking around to hear them. 

T'Challa smoothly read out the syllables and—nothing. They were just an unrelated series of Russian words. Word salad. They were almost foreign to him, as if he had never heard them before—an unfamiliar oddity. But his adrenal gland caught up a moment later, as if racing behind to say, oh _those_ words? Yeah, we hate those. His heart rate slammed up, and he tensed his muscles hard against vibranium, feeling the sharp bite of it against his skin. It was meaningless. It didn't _do_ anything. But his body reacted like he expected the command to sink right back into his marrow, make him dance. . 

"Is this part of the conditioning?" He could hear the tension in his own voice. 

"No," Shuri said. "Well, wait. Let's test it."

And then she rattled off the words--a woman's voice didn't land so heavily. His heart-rate, he could feel, wasn't as high. And when he glanced over Shuri's shoulder, the data backed up his intuition. 

"Well," Shuri said. "Are you fighting the urge to kill us or obey our every whim?" 

"I mean, I don't think so--"

"Yell penis as loud as you can, Soldier," Shuri said. Bucky felt his face twist in confusion. "Is that a medical order--"

She rolled her eyes. "I think you're in the clear." 

"I'm unimpressed with your level of prank orders," T'Challa muttered, purposefully just within her hearing, and bent over to unstrap Bucky. Shuri rolled her eyes even harder. 

"I'm reacting," Bucky said. "You have hard evidence that I'm reacting to the words—"

"You're afraid, Sergeant Barnes," Shuri said. She had been joking for quite some time, but there was gravity in her tone now. "You're afraid of what's going to happen, or your body is, because it has learned to be. But you've got bad data. We can keep saying it if you want--we'll say it until you don't even notice it. But no need to tie you up."

"Do it again, please," Bucky said. Shuri and T'Challa exchanged a brief glance, but for the second time Shuri said them. Still nothing, and this time Bucky wrapped his only hand around his own chest—an inadequate restraint, but maybe something to slow it down.

He wasn’t ready to comply, though he dug his nails into his skin. 

He wanted to beg them to keep saying the words, until their voices were hoarse. Until he could stop flinching away from the memory of what they meant. Seeing something on his face, Shuri rolled her eyes theatrically. 

"I should be offended at all this doubt," she said. "Even if you don't believe in yourself, have faith in me." 

He froze, uncertain. Something about the rattling error of the restraints, of the words. It was hard to remember social skills—it was a strange sensation. He could hear the words reaching for a command that was no longer there and he could feel himself failing to interpret cues he had just managed. This was going to be a long process, he knew, and it was hard not to feel strangled by it. T'Challa sighed. 

"She's still joking," he said. Shuri proved it by hauling in one of the Dora Milaje from the hallway. She shoved the last bit of a pastry into her mouth, clearly not on high alert, and then she said the phrases, stumbling a little bit from the unfamiliar words. 

Nothing. Shuri squinted at his face and grabbed another passerby, poking at her phone and saying, "Are you hungry? I'm hungry. Brother, I'm getting tacos." 

Someone came from the kitchen with food, and then was handed the words to read. Even the Queen Mother swung by and greeted Bucky formally, resting her hand on her daughter's shoulder. And then she said the words, before eating a taco more regally than anyone he'd ever seen. 

His breathing picked up with each repetition, but a smile started irrepressibly on his face. It began in the space between his eyes and then spread to his mouth, as impossible to restrain as the shivering twitching of his muscles had been. Between the phrases, his breathing would calm and his the flood of hormones would dissipate. His cheeks would get a little less green. He was still anxious—far more anxious than he would have normally thought made a good excuse for a party, but it worked out. The hated order words had become a kind of speakeasy password, and the tension licking under his skin was the same as the way the old Prohibition gangsters used to watch out for the Feds. For kids in his and Steve’s generation, that was the height of counter-culture cool. 

When Shuri saw him relax after every new attempt, she smiled even more broadly and grabbed someone else. 

More food arrived, and this delivery woman seemed to realize that she was going to be expected to say nonsense in Russian, or something. Bucky's secret password transformed into the opportunity for a party. 

When she said the words, her voice fell naturally into the rhythm of the music, almost rapping it. Shuri was laughing openly. 

"I bet we could get this on soundcloud," she said. "Put a beat to it. Brother, what do you think? Would that be a good part of Wakanda's opening plans? Diplomacy and bangers. And, hey. If there are any more HYDRA assassins out there on the old model, we could take them over through the radio." 

" _Shuri_ ," he said, but his voice was fond and there was a crumb of something on his cheek. It was hard to be frightened of him in context. 

Bucky couldn't be sure in his own safety, but it was hard not to take his cues from the people around him. This wasn't treated like a grave safety check, not at all. They didn't seem to think there was any risk, but--the fear was hard to shake. Even when he was smiling, the words landed hard in his memories of when he hadn't had a self. 

And more than that, he didn't want this sense of triumph to dissipate. 

After everyone had eaten, and Shuri had gotten distracted by sketching out prototypes of a new arm on her napkin, Bucky said into the silence, "Maybe we could try again tomorrow?" 

"You can have tacos without the trauma you know."

He felt his cheeks grow hot—he remembers being less transparent than this—and looked down. 

She nudged him with her elbow. "We'll try every day this week. You're too skinny, anyway."

And they did.


End file.
